


Who takes care of auto insurance in Panem?

by quoctran98



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:46:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24692485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quoctran98/pseuds/quoctran98
Summary: District three makes electronics, seven produces lumber, twelve mines coal, but who takes care of the auto insurance in Panem? Follow Katniss in a series of vignettes through alternate realities in an expanded Panem with countless districts, each specializing in extremely niche industries.
Kudos: 3





	1. District 152: Auto Insurance

It’s early in the morning when the light rainfall wakes me up – I’ve never been a heavy sleeper, but I wasn’t going to get much sleep today anyways. I resign myself to waking up early and getting some work done before the Reaping this afternoon. 

I roll out of bed, brush my teeth, and get changed. I sneak out trying not to wake up my mother or Prim – it’s going to be her first Reaping today. Before the sun is fully up, I’m on the sixteenth floor of the Knife, a postmodern skyscraper named for its resemblance to a knife – if that knife were 300 feet tall and made of steel and glass.

The computer quietly whirrs to life as I punch in my work email “keverdeen002@district152.pnm” – my dad was also a K. Everdeen, but they never removed his email from the system after he died a few years ago in an actuarial accident, so I’m stuck with the “002” appended to the end of my email address. The people over in District 71 in charge of internal IT systems can be so slow sometimes, but their speed (or, rather, lack thereof) is nothing compared to District 93’s – they’re Panem’s department of motor vehicles.

I’m lost in thought as Gale drops by my desk – of course he’s in the office this early. Gale’s an insurance adjuster up on the 23rd floor. We’ve grown close over the past couple of years as he’s helped me learn the ropes. Gale drops a manila folder on my desk, “I knew you’d want to get in early and do some work to get your mind off of things, so I went ahead brought over the forms from District 89’s purchase of a new fleet of taxicabs.”

District 89 was mainly built around the taxi industry, but it’s hard to be a district full of taxicab drivers – everyone had their own cars and the only place to go were parking lots full of other taxis. They were hoping that the new fleet of luxury taxicabs would attract more customers and revitalize business, but of course they had to be insured – that’s where we came in. District 152 provides auto insurance for all of Panem.

I spend the morning running numbers for the District 89 project. It’s particularly tricky to insure this new fleet of cars, since the only cars that they’d be getting into collisions with are ones that were also being insured in this deal – the computer program crashed a few times trying to figure this out, but I live for this kind of stuff. In my short time at the firm, I’ve become known as somewhat of a prodigy in the actuarial sciences.

My father had taught me everything he knew about being an actuary. I was barely six years old, when he brought me into the office; it was love at first sight: the bureaucratic paperwork, the Excel macros, the actuarial software. I decided then and there that I would one day work in auto insurance – not that I had much choice, pretty much everyone in District 152 did.

Before I knew it, Gale shows up at my cubicle again, reminding me that it was already one o’clock; the Reaping would start soon, and attendance was mandatory. We ride the elevator down to the lobby and head to the square. We walked, of course. Pretty much no one in District 152 drove cars; we all knew the risks associated with that.

Save for a few puddles on the roads there was no evidence of the rain earlier this morning. The sky was clear, and it was warm with a slight breeze. The day was downright pleasant – too bad the Reaping would have to ruin it.

The square crowds up as I find my place among the other sixteen-year-olds. I scan the rest of the children shuffling into place, looking for Prim. I see her filing into place near the front of the crowd – close to the makeshift stage. I try to catch her eyes but fail; she’s intensely focused on the stage as Mayor Undersee walks onto it and takes his place behind the podium.

He’s a tall, balding man. I’ve met him once – the mayor was getting his new Toyota Camry insured. Mayor Undersee was one of the few people in the city who still drove around. Thanks to that his premiums were absurdly low – there was virtually no risk of any vehicular collisions. During the summers, you could catch the mayor zipping around in his champagne-colored sedan. He went pretty fast, since all of the traffic cops were in District 211.

The clock strikes two and Mayor Undersee starts recounting the history of our nation. From the ashes of what was once called North America, through the droughts, fires, and rising seas, Panem, a Capitol surrounded by countless districts, each specializing in more increasingly niche industries. He drones on about the failed uprising known as the Dark Days and about how the Hunger Games were penance for the districts’ rebellion. He finally wraps up; it’s time for the Reaping to start.


	2. District 23: Motivational Posters

Beep! Beep! Beep! I hit the snooze, but it’s too late – I’m already wide awake. I reach over to the nightstand and fumble around for a bit for my glasses. I finally put them on, and I’m greeted by a poster of a small kitten hanging onto a tree branch. “Hang in there!” it reminds me.

For once, I actually appreciate the poster’s message. Usually, I’m just annoyed by it – there’s only so many times you can see that cute kitten before it wears you down. But I turned 18 last month, so today’s my last Reaping. “Hang in there,” I tell myself as I walk down the stairs to the kitchen.

“Morning, Katniss!” Prim greets me, not even bothering to look up from the smoothie she’s blending up. It’s mainly green with some spots of blue and red; I’m not too sure what vile concoction she’s come up with today. I ask her about it.

“It’s pretty gross – I’m not gonna lie,” she admits, but then adds, quoting the poster featuring a man silhouetted against a sunrise that’s plastered above our dining table, “The pain you feel today will be the strength you feel tomorrow.” I can only groan as I pour myself a bowl of Lucky Charms.

I notice the two long thin tubes covered in a festive wrapping paper – it’s customary for parents to leave gifts for their children on the day of the Reaping, but I already know what these are. Like nearly everyone else in District 23, my mom and dad both work as graphic designers making motivational posters – these were either some samples that never made it to production or posters from a batch that didn’t sell very well.

I unwrap mine. A wolf standing alone in a snowy forest intensely stares back at me; “You have to be at you’re strongest when your feeling you’re weakest.” It’s riddled with typos and the wolf kind of scares me. I look up and Prim’s unwrapping her poster. She looks at it with a sort of confused look and turns it around to show me.

That damn cat is looking at me again. “Hang in there!”


	3. District 89: Taxicabs

It’s late. I overslept. The Reaping starts in less than an hour. My mom and Prim are probably already making their way to the square in the center of town. I hop out of bed, tripping over the pile of laundry by my bathroom. In ten minutes, my teeth are brushed, my clothes are on, and I’m out the front door.

Cars of vibrant colors and designs whiz by. They’re taxis and they’re all unoccupied. A classic yellow and black cab – the trademark color of the Taxi Co. (the name’s a bit on the nose, if you ask me) – pulls up by me. The driver looks to be around fifty, if I had to guess, and asks me if I need a ride. I actually do, since District 89 is nearly 300 square miles of crisscrossing streets and the central square is nearly five miles away, but I tell him that I’m good.

It’s been over six years now that my dad was run over by a cab from the Taxi Co. and I haven’t been able to bring myself to get in one of those cars since – not that it’s been a problem, though; the streets here are full of taxis. I hail a bright purple sedan as it approaches me and hop in as it slows down. A young woman who can’t be much older than me greets me, asking me if I needed to get to the Reaping. I reply with a curt “yes.”

With everyone needing to get to the reaping, today’s one of the busiest days for the taxis in District 89. Usually, business is pretty slow with the majority of the population being taxi drivers themselves. You’d get the occasional tourist from the Capitol and not much else. But what else could we do? We’re District 89 – we operate taxicabs.

I stare blankly out the window, letting the suburban houses and parking lots full of taxis pass by, as raindrops start to fall. Lost in thought, I trace a raindrop as it rolls down the window. The small droplet gets larger and gathers speed, eating up smaller raindrops, until it joins a stream of water flowing down the window. The rain starts picking up and more drops accumulate. It soon becomes impossible to follow a single drop of rain after it hits the window.

I finally look up – we’re in the wrong part of town. I cuss out the driver and demand that she stops and lets me out. I quickly hail a new cab; this one’s blue with neon green stripes all along the side. The driver’s a bit chattier than the last one and starts complaining about the new ride-sharing apps that have started popping up. 

These apps have been a popular topic of conversation for the past few months, but could you really blame District 247 for developing them? Their job is literally to create industry-disrupting smartphone apps, so I just smile and nod along. In the rest of the fifteen-minute drive to square, the driver manages to ask where I’m from (District 89), what my mom did for a living (drive taxis), what I was going to be after I finished school (a taxi driver), and what my favorite TV show was (Taxicab Confessions). 

When we finally reach the square. I pay my fare and jump out. It’s pouring and I’m completely drenched, as I take my place near the back. I can spot Prim in the front. She waves at me and I smile back. I see my mom by her side – I’m going to get such a talking to after the Reaping for wasting money on cab fare.


	4. District 211: Concrete

I watch Cinna walk away as the glass cylinder that I’m in begins to rise. I look up, and I’m immediately blinded by the sunlight – the sky is clear and there’s not a single cloud in the sky. It beautiful, but the air is unbearably hot and dry. I’m surrounded by sand, with rolling dunes to my right and a beach to my left. Otherwise, it’s a flat hellscape of sand for as far as the eye can see.

I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere. But I also don’t like being in the Hunger Games and being killed at the hands of another teenager, so I get over it. My eyes adjust quickly and to my left, maybe fifty feet away, I can see Peeta. His eyes catch mine, but he quickly looks away, staring at the Cornucopia with a feigned intensity. 

Claudius’s Templesmith’s iconic voice catches me by surprise, as it booms throughout the arena, shaking the sand by my feet, “Let the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games begin!”

Sixty seconds until I can move. My eyes have fully adjusted by this point. I scan the area around the Cornucopia, looking for useful supplies strewn around. It’s the usual stuff: food, water, pieces of clothing, backpacks with who-knows-what inside – nothing unique stands out. 

Forty-five seconds left. I squint, trying to make out more items through the heat’s haze. There are definitely more useful items closer to the Cornucopia. I see more traditional weapons: a set of spears, a huge sword, and a bow with a quiver of arrows – not that they’ll do me any good; growing up in District 211, I’d only learned how to pour concrete, never even having seen any of these weapons in person. There’s some more esoteric stuff strewn in there, too. Nearly four hundred feet away, I think I can spot a set of metal spatulas, glinting in the sunlight – the line cooks from District 94 have proven to be deadly with those in the past. Right by the Cornucopia – it seems to be at least three hundred yards away; the arena keeps getting bigger year by year as the Capitol adds new districts – I can make out a huge yellow object. It’s a taxicab?

Thirty seconds. Is there anything for me? I keep scanning around, but if I can’t find anything soon, I’ll probably grab the backpack twenty feet ahead of me and run toward the dunes, I tell myself. Then I see it. A large, beige bag lies only seventy, maybe eighty, feet in front of me. I could recognize it anywhere – sixty pounds of Portland cement.

Fifteen seconds. My pulse quickens as I begin to formulate a plan. Right by the bag of cement I see a similarly sized bag of gravel. It’s the perfect aggregate – small pieces of rock all between three-eighths of an inch and one-and-a-half inches in diameter. Except for one thing: I still need a fine aggregate, a cost-saving material used to increase the volume of concrete. Without it, the cement and gravel aren’t even enough to pour a two square feet slab of concrete four inches thick.

Five seconds left. I keep looking; there has to be some fine aggregate somewhere.

Four. I position myself to sprint toward bag of Portland cement. Not that I’ll be much use without a fine aggregate.

Three. I see Peeta’s doing the same – he’s obviously seen the bag of cement, too. I wonder if he’s solved the fine aggregate problem.

Two. If only there was some crushed stone or sand…

One. Sand!

The gunshot goes off and I take off towards the cement and gravel.


End file.
